Bethesda Adding Kinect Voice Commands to Skyrim

A couple months back you may remember Bethesda Game Studios head Todd Howard showed off a video at GDC depicting what the team behind the latest entry into the Elder Scrolls franchise could do if given just a week to themselves without deadlines or anything in their way.  Many of the features were exceptionally exciting possibilities and Howard said that, at the time, they were not certain if they would be integrated into the game.  Skyrim's most recent 1.5 patch added new killcams, something that was featured in the video so it was well within the realm of possibility that many of the items could be added.

It seems that Bethesda has decided to add another new feature, but this one looks even more enticing: Kinect voice integration.  To be released in a future update, Skyrim's Kinect support includes the ability to issue two hundred voice commands to help speed up your game.  More than just the necessary dragon shouts you'd want, players can issue commands to allies, assign favorite weapons and magic spells, inventory management (sorting, etc.), map usage, hotkeying, and save/load commands.

Bethesda says that they will be releasing a full list of the commands "in the coming weeks."  Bethesda also promises that new, Xbox 360-exclusive content is on the way including new quests, locations and features.  What this is remains to be seen but (and not to beat a dead horse here) E3 isn't too long from now.

I personally find this a very enticing add-on to the game.  The concept video shown at GDC looked great but I didn't figure Kinect support to be this far along, let alone even an option post-launch.  Outside of Mass Effect 3 this could be one of the greatest displays of the peripheral's potential.